The obvious one? Tomb Raider.

Earthworm Jim had a couple of sort-of-solid ports with more polished pixel art, though IIRC a couple of levels were missing. They also did an unreleased (but leaked) Super Star Wars port which was very faithful (and somewhat better than the SNES at some areas). 😀

Many of the early (89-91) Genesis EA and Ballistic/Accolade titles have had Amiga/DOS versions (where they originated)

Battle Arena Toshinden could be mentioned for being *slightly* better than the original PSX version (with some smoother gameplay, netplay and 3d support), it's already borderlining to not be mentioned in a good games thread though

Usually the translation from console to DOS drops translucency effects (lookup tables = expensive) and some colors (jamming an RGB555 game into a single 256 color palette can make some quality compromises for the SNES/PSX ports)

Probably belongs in Milliways

Most of the good ports started in the PS1 era, and those are usually Win9x (Resident Evil, FF7, Driver). SNES/Megadrive games on PC are usually terrible conversions and best played through emulation. The exception would be those games that started on PC and were ported to console (Wolf3D, Doom, LHX Attack Chopper).

most PS1 multiplatform games (that not originated from PC) usually already target win9x rather than pure-DOS.
DOS games that multiplatformed to PS1 that i remember playing it: Z, SimCity, Romance of Three Kingodom

Some nice games from SNES that were ported almost unchanged to DOS are:

• The Lost Vikings
• Blackthorne
• Earthworm Jim (1 & 2)

There are games that went the other way around - first released for DOS, then for the SNES. One example is Prince of Persia. The SNES version greatly expands over the original release, adding much more gameplay elements and length, although at times it feels that it loses the atmosphere of the original.

There are also fighting games (Mortal Kombat series), which have some similarity between the DOS and SNES versions, although for the most part, the DOS versions were much closer to the Arcade releases, with higher quality than the console versions.

For Playstation/DOS multi-platform games, the original Rayman comes to mind.

In the 3D zone, you had DOOM which was ported to the N64 (it is in fact not a port, but more of a remake with completely different visuals, and all new levels), and Duke Nukem Total Meltdown, which is the PSX variant of Duke Nukem 3D. This one is kind of true to the original - it has all the original levels, plus a new episode, and the music is different, but it plays essentially the same.

Worth mentioning is Turrican 2. An excellent PC release, but that game originated on the C64 / Amiga.

I used to own the DOS version of Mega Man X. While there were some changes... it wasn't terrible 😁. It's not hard to get the SNES version nowadays though between the Mega Man X collection and the various virtual console releases.

Oscar
Jim Power
Joe & Mac
Risky Woods
Superfrog
Zool

Not sure you'd really want to spend much time playing any of them, though.

More fighters that hasn't been mentioned include Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Primal Rage.

PSX games were mostly ported to Win9x, but IIRC Wip3out, Battle Arena Toshinden and Destruction Derby (only the first one - the second was for Windows) had DOS ports. There was also Actua Soccer (not sure if that was a console game first?).

I think Saturn mostly had Win9x ports too - mainly arcades classics like Sega Rally, Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter, House of the Dead...

Oh, for SNES there was also DOS ports of Aladdin and The Lion King.

dexter311 wrote:

More fighters that hasn't been mentioned include Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Primal Rage..

Those are arcade to MSDOS. also the Street Fighter 2 port (and Super Street Fighter 2 which was actually a SNES->DOS) definitely don't fall into the realm of "good". Arguably the crappy korean homebrew ports are better than the official SF2 port, it at least has a nice OPL2 rendition of guile's theme 🤣

dexter311 wrote:

Oh, for SNES there was also DOS ports of Aladdin.

It's the Genesis/MD Aladdin by Shiny/Virgin. The SNES one was a different, Capcom production

leileilol wrote:

dexter311 wrote:

More fighters that hasn't been mentioned include Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Primal Rage..

Those are arcade to MSDOS. also the Street Fighter 2 port (and Super Street Fighter 2 which was actually a SNES->DOS) definitely don't fall into the realm of "good".

Indeed, SF2 and SSF2 in DOS never felt particularly good, however SSF2T for DOS was awesome. It's nearly Arcade-perfect, and has a dual soundtrack (MIDI and CD audio), both quite good.

Surprised that no-one mentioned Maniac Mansion (it went the other way DOS->NES but still relevant to the post).